Digital media content may be enjoyed on a variety of different devices, including but not limited to personal computers and portable media players. Portable media players may utilize solid state memory or hard drives that allow very large numbers of media content items to be compactly stored and easily accessed.
However, the playback of compressed media data via such a portable media player may have various shortcomings compared to the playback of the same media data in its native format on a compact disc or the like. For example, solid state or hard drive-based portable media players may introduce pauses between tracks that do not exist in the native format of the media item. Likewise, some audio compression formats may utilize fixed-length compression samples. In this case, the end of a compressed audio track may contain a segment of quiet space to fill out the last sample in the song. When the audio track is played, such compression artifacts may cause gaps of silence that may be disruptive to a listener and interfere with the music listening experience. Additionally, latency between tracks may also contribute to pauses between tracks in both compressed and uncompressed media data.